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Purists will be perplexed and the average moviegoer ultimately disinterested by director Tim Burton’s pedestrian spin of Lewis Carroll’s 1865 classic, Alice in Wonderland. Those hoping to see the heroine swim in the pool of tears, the pig-baby, or the Mock Turtle will leave disappointed. Instead of losing her way in Wonderland, this Alice takes the Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings route, fighting evil as an empowered warrior.

From Book Patrol: It started innocently enough. Over dinner a friend mentioned that he saw a used bookmobile for sale on Craigslist and wished he could by it. That was all the impetus Tom Corwin needed.

He was soon off to suburban Chicago to buy the decommissioned bookmobile. He paid $7500 for it.

Corwin has already garnered the support of the National Book Foundation, the Association of American Publishers and the American Library Association for the project and has signed a deal with Whitewater Films in Los Angeles for the documentary which will be titled "Behind the Wheel of the Bookmobile." The film will also include information on the history of bookmobiles.

Authors that have already signed up in support include Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Junot Diaz, Tom Robbins and Scott Turow, with many of them to take a turn at the wheel...here they are.

Actor Robert Downey Jr. might seem an interesting choice to play the seminal fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. He’s not British, and he doesn’t fit the physical description of the protagonist in the Guy Ritchie film opening Dec. 25.

“Sherlock Holmes was tall and thin with a hook nose. Robert Downey Jr. is too good-looking,” said Teresa Torres, a Cascade Park Community librarian and longtime fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the series.

Still, Downey Jr. and Holmes do have one thing in common some might find surprising. The actor famously battled drugs and alcohol for years, and cocaine was among the substances he struggled with. It was a drug Holmes indulged in as well, to the dismay of his sidekick and chronicler, Dr. John Watson.

Torres, a 57-year-old Vancouver resident, has been intrigued by Sherlock Holmes since her teens.

“I love (the stories). I like mysteries, and I love how Sherlock Holmes uses his brain to figure out the crimes. He was always very logical and precise,” she said.

Google appears to be reaching out to "Blade Runner" fans with its planned smartphone, currently called Nexus One. But nobody consulted the heirs of Philip K. Dick, who say they own the rights to the term their father coined four decades ago.

The LibVid Awards
Recognising the Best Library Videos on the Web
These days, it seems like all we librarians do is create videos videos videos. Night after night, we leave our offices with foggy, blurred vision from staring at Camtasia editing software for hours.

The LibVidAward Blog highlights some of the best, most inspirational library instructional videos out there.

If you have Netflix you can watch movies on your computer using their "watch instantly" feature. I have a movie that is in the "watch instantly" selections that I highly reccomend. Check out The Visitor (Link is to Amazon so you can see what the movie is, I cannot link to Netflix)